


little fires among the wreckage

by buckyjerkbarnes



Series: thanos shoulda took me instead (iw fics) [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers & Tony Stark Friendship, You're Welcome, and i've exploited them all lmao, and they understand each other better, for the first time ever, it's incredible, most tagged characters only make minor appearances, there are so many parallels between these two, these two both need hugs omfg, they have an Adult Conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckyjerkbarnes/pseuds/buckyjerkbarnes
Summary: In the midst of the planning, of trying to gather their wits to figure out how to reverse the damage Thanos inflicted on the universe, Steve realized pretty quickly that Natasha was trying to pair him and Tony off so they would actually address the elephant in the room.[Or: Steve and Tony are able to communicate about the things that passed in Civil War and reach the understanding we deserve.]





	little fires among the wreckage

**Author's Note:**

> I've got one more part planned for this series (it'll slide in at part 1) and then this thing will be complete! Note beforehand (!!!): Lulama is one of the children that hangs out with Bucky. She and her two friends will be properly introduced in the part I am in the process of working on. Stay on the look out! Enjoy!

In the midst of the planning, of trying to gather their wits to figure out how to reverse the damage Thanos inflicted on the universe, Steve realized pretty quickly that Natasha was trying to pair him and Tony off so they would actually address the elephant in the room.To his credit, Steve had tried... sort of. After they'd adjourned their meeting for the evening on one of the first days where grief covered them all like an oppressive blanket on a hot afternoon, he'd called Tony's name, watched the man's shoulders go stiff. Before he could say anything further, Tony muttered: "Not tonight. Just... not tonight." 

That had been almost a month ago. 

(The first time they'd seen each other after almost two and a half years, Tony had blinked, bleary and his eyes fever-bright with tears, choked: "You really went full Brooklyn hipster, huh?"

Shuri had called him something similar, so he got the reference just fine. He did not smile. His chest was still collapsing in on itself, dust still embedded beneath his fingernails. "I guess I did." Steve did not say the only reason he'd grown a beard was because Nat had changed her hair and Wanda had lost her accent and he couldn't exactly hide his physique, not when there were multiple blogs and online forums dedicated to tracking any Captain America sightings.)

So, between the pressure of searching for a solution to pacify both the panicking public, who know as much as they were allowed to publish in a too-short press release, and themselves, the tension between Steve and Tony has been mounting into something...Well. It's something. Tony was the only person who'd signed the Accords that Steve has not spoken to, as even Rhodes was at their six if need be, and while it had stung dully, finding out secondhand Tony had finally popped the question to Miss Potts, Steve had felt nothing but joy for him. 

"You ought to call," Bucky told him after Steve delivered the news. His fingers were warm and soothing as they stroked through Steve's hair, his mouth pressing tenderly at Steve's temple. "Might make you feel better."

"I sent the phone," Steve murmured, trying to keep the mulish note out of his voice. "The ball's in his court. He'll contact me when he's ready." 

"I don't know Stark from Adam, but I have no doubt you two probably match each other for levels of stubbornness." He paused, the pressure of his lips going a little lighter as he smiled into Steve's skin. "And stupidity." 

He didn't tell Bucky he was absolutely right. Sam had a theory that any inflation to Buck's ego just made his hair longer, that  _your boy already looks like Jesus and has three kids following him around— nine more followers and it'll be the second coming._ It had made Steve smile, but now two of those three children had vanished and so had Sam and Bucky, too, and Steve's mouth hadn't slanted up since he'd seen Bucky on the tarmac before the fight. He still slept at their hut. He kept Curly and Billie Holiday fed, brought Lulama food, which always got a small, muted: " _Enkosi,_ Gold Lion." Steve would try to snag her some chocolate, which always made her smile a little brighter on the bad days. 

Thor had gone off-world with Rocket and Nebula to some star-forge in the hopes of securing a gauntlet to counteract Thanos's, leaving Bruce, Tony, and Shuri plowing through what little information had been gathered concerning the various signatures the Infinity stones had left after they'd been used. It put Steve, Nat, Clint, and Rhodey in the position of being too damn idle for their tastes: for the most part, he and Nat played their public relations cards, the four of them trying their best to plot how best to defeat Thanos tactically, but this was difficult given they had no idea what setting, if at all, they might encounter the Mad Titan again. Clint barely spoke and when he did, it was only to Nat and it was short, sharp responses that made her eyes grow duller with each one. Steve had never been the sort to just twiddle his thumbs, to sit back and let others work their hardest. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to go directly to Thanos's front door and rip his teeth out, to do  _something_ other than play observer. He did try to assist, of course, especially Shuri, who slept less than Tony in her balancing act of playing top-global scientist and Queen of a small country. But he knew very little that could be brought to the table, the facts and figures presented on holo-boards about as gibberish to him as baby-babbling.

So he stuck to moving between the lab and the kitchens, bringing food when one stomach rumble became too much and clearing away the plates when need be. A television appearance here and there. He'd even activated an old Twitter account just to send direct updates to the public, muting notifications wondering when the fuck the Avengers were going to fix the world they'd helped to break. Every time he saw one of those replies, he'd think  _I'm just as lost as you are, sister_ and fight down a migraine to end all migraines. 

By the time darkness had fallen and Steve had made two trips to the hut and back, he was so physically exhausted, he felt like he was on the verge of curling up beneath Shuri's sand table and just calling it a night. Rhodes had convinced Clint to go down to a weapon's facility, Clint's bow and quiver held in either hand, leaving he and Nat to talk quietly while observing the scientists at work. He saw, more than once, Tony flick his eyes Steve's way, mouth part like he was on the verge of speech, before he would shake himself, head and hands, and get back to work. The days were getting longer and there were more failures than successes and maybe it was because Steve really, really wanted nothing more than to crawl into his and Bucky's bed and just lapse into a coma until all this blew over, but a sudden rise of irritation flooded him. 

He cut Nat off, touching her shoulder apologetically as he pushed off the table they'd been perching on. Steve crossed the room, intent in every footstep, and grabbed Tony by the forearm. "I'm borrowing him for a few minutes." 

"What in the _—_?" 

Bruce pushed his glasses up on his nose, watching them pace away warily. "I think we're about to wrap up for the night, anyway." 

Shuri prompted, without looking away from her tablet: "Do you wish to take a Dora with you?" 

He shot her a polite smile, shaking his head in the negative and shoving more than ushering Tony into a quiet alcove off of Shuri's lab. "Spit it out, please before I have a stroke." 

Tony blinked, still reeling from being abruptly plucked from his work. "A man your age? That's likely to happen anyway." 

He couldn't help the furious growl that welled up in his throat, hand lifting to pinch tiredly at the bridge of his nose. "Stop it," Steve said. "For once in your life, Tony, quit it with the jokes. Just... stop." 

"Don't you know by now that I use my quick wit as a coping mechanism?" Tony snapped, folding his arms defensively over his chest. He looked exhausted as Steve felt, dark violet crescents beneath his eyes. In the last thirty-seven days, he seemed to have aged fifteen years. "And I don't have anything to say to you. Now, let me go. I need to take a look at Shuri's diagrams again." 

"They aren't going to change in five minutes." 

"With the way her mind is always moving? It's probably already changed just now." 

"Bruce and Shuri can handle it," Steve insisted. "Bruce said so himself that you were all reaching the end of your rope for the evening." 

Tony's mouth thinned and went white at the corners. When he spoke, it was clearly and lowly, leaving no room for Steve to mishear him. "I'm not doing this with you right now, Rogers. Let me get back to work." 

"We've been stepping around each other for over a month, Tony. It's becoming a hindrance to the team." 

"What  _team_? The one you broke up? That team?" was the seething reply Steve received. There were dark, dark circles beneath Tony's eyes, a testament to his hard work, and the arch reactor in his chest glowed electric blue under the white lights over their heads.  

"You know why I did it," Steve said calmly. "You know why it had to be done." 

"Do I?" Tony challenged. "Your little letter was the most I've ever gotten out of you and that wasn't even done in person."

They were practically the definition of over-worked and worn. Despite the serum, despite Steve's will to keep going for the sake of those who weren't with them to fight, he was running low on fumes. And Tony was so human and even if he had a track record for sporadic sleep schedules and a knack for feeling responsible for things out of his hands that showed so clearly in each of his actions. Maybe they shouldn't be having this conversation at the moment. Maybe Steve should have waited. But here they were, alone together for the first time since that bunker covered in snow amidst the Russian wasteland. They'd become very different people. Older, wiser. Some of these elements showed more than others, but they were, no doubt, present. 

"We...we don't really know each other, Tony," Steve said quietly, rubbing a hand over his brow more out of something to do with his hands than anything else. "Not really. Or, I don't feel like you know me." 

Tony actually looked stung by this, before his expression abruptly draped with steel and he clenched his jaw. "I don't agree with that." 

"Let me rephrase, then. You knew Captain America." 

Before he could seem to get a grasp on the speed of his tongue, Tony prompted: "What's the difference?" 

Steve barely stamped down on the urge to do a complete about-face and just stride across and out of the city to the hut without dignifying that with any sort of response. He was too tired to be properly exasperated. He wanted Bucky back, if just to see him, to catch a glimpse at his beautiful, disarming smile Steve had never stood a chance against. If this was the only time he and Tony were going to speak to one another in the foreseeable future, he wanted to be sure Tony understood. "If you really knew Steve Rogers, you'd know the difference." Steve pressed his lips together, dampening them with his tongue before he leveled Tony with a look, was only minimally surprised when Tony actually met his gaze head-on. "What you said, in Siberia. How I didn't deserve the shield, like that was something that would make me change my mind. It's made me think... do you really believe, between Bucky and that glorified frisbee, I'd actually pick the fucking frisbee?" 

He wouldn't be able to forget the complete and utter shock in Tony's features that day, the dull clatter of the shield hitting the earth as he tightened his arm around Bucky's middle. As though there was ever a snowball's chance he'd have made a different choice. As though he'd have ever given Bucky up for anything. Tony hadn't even tried to reply, hadn't even tried for  _language_ _, five cents in the swear jar, Rogers_ , instead letting the words hang heavy between them. 

Steve pressed further with: “Can I say something without you interrupting me??”

Tony squinted at him, a beat, then two, and, before a third could come to pass, he nodded, haltingly.

Inhaling slowly, as though prepping his lungs for the burning words that were to soon leave him, Steve started to speak. “Imagine you have one person in this world. Just one. And this person is everything to you— they support you, they drive you to be better, they enrage you and they inspire you and they fill your entire heart with their presence so much that, if something ever happened to them, you’d be hollow. Just a walking husk moving through the world.

“And suddenly you do lose them. There’s nothing that can prepare you for that. No amount of training or what ifs that occupy your darkest nightmares can cushion the blow. But what’s worse is it’s all your fault. They reach out their hand to you and you’re straining, pushing yourself to get to them, but just as you’re about to grab them, they fall away and your only function is watcher.

“Time passes and things change and suddenly the world is foreign and new and you don’t know what to do with yourself without them. There’s floating sky ships and aliens in New York and you think  _wow, what would they think if they saw this?_ And you force yourself to move on even if you think about them right when you wake up and they’re the last thing in your head when you’re going to sleep: the worst days are those when they’re with you in the in-between times, too, during the waking hours and the sleeping ones, both. You hold onto their ghost. And it holds onto you.

“But come to find out, they aren’t gone. Their ghost is real and it has been tortured and turned inside out, has had strings latched to its bones so the worst of the worst can make them do their bidding. And you know it’s your fault. All of it. It all circles back to if you’d just been quicker, if you’d reached that much farther— if you hadn’t let them fall or if you’d just fallen with them, things might have worked out for the better. Then you're made to go up against them, willing to lay down your life if it means they can walk away, and you fall. You fall and they barely know you, but they fall with you and it breaks your heart in two knowing you weren't brave enough to do the same.

“And then now you know they’re out there in the world, even if they don’t want you to know that. And you’ve failed them once, twice if you count the years they were held out of your reach, and you don’t think you can stomach letting them down a third time. But the world keeps getting crueler and you’ve made friends, forged bonds that can’t be unmade and while these relationships… these relationships hold such a high value to you, nothing compares to your person, the one you’d give it all up for. You don’t want to hurt those around you, but circumstances have forced your hand— you have no choice because if it comes down between the rest of the world and this one, precious person, you’ll chose that person, hands down, every single time.

“I am sorry, Tony,” Steve said, tipping his face to look at Tony and finding the other man’s eyes were slightly red-rimmed, his mouth set in a hard, unmoving line. Tony looked like he was mere milliseconds away from breaking his own teeth if he clenched his jaw any harder. “I am so sorry that Hydra took your parents from you. I am so, so sorry that the Winter Soldier is the face Hydra wore and the face you blame, but I stand by what I said that day. Bucky Barnes didn’t kill them and he never would have if he’d been given the choice. But he had no choice, Tony. He never did. I fought for him because I wanted to reclaim his ability to choose.”

“I…,” Tony made a low noise in the back of his throat. His eyes abruptly screwed up and he gave a hard shake of his head like he was cramming a particularly difficult sentence together for delivery. “I know that. I know that now. I read the file. I even found a few videos— stuff related to the memory wipes. I saw how they reprogrammed him like a machine because he would come back to himself.” Tony looked at Steve and though the words  _I’m sorry_ never left his lips, Steve felt them uttered anyway. “He tried to fight them and they stamped on his spirit until he broke for them again.”

Steve had asked Natasha to compile anything in the SHIELD data dump related to the Winter Soldier into a folder on a flashdrive. It took her little more than a week to comb through it all with an algorithm, to locate even the tiniest of mentions into folders organized by file type. She handed it to him with the condition he would walk away from the footage, from the clinical notes, from the multitude of photographs at angles that presented Bucky as nothing more than a scientific object if he felt the repercussions of pulling on that thread too harshly. Steve's always had a high tolerance for pain. He forced himself to read every mission report where Bucky was described in the manner of a  _thing_ , not a living, breathing human who was loved and treasured. He watched every video, sound on, and would never forget the raw, animal-like screams that ripped out of Bucky’s throat whenever those electrified paddles were pressed to his cheek, to his head, and smothered out everything that made him Bucky Barnes.

It was the least Steve felt he’d owned Bucky, to see everything.

(After, Steve didn’t sleep for almost a week and a half. He didn’t eat, either. He dropped so much weight that his stomach started to bloat and he could feel himself shutting down with each passing hour. If it hadn’t been for Sam’s gentle cajoling and Natasha’s steady hands, he’d have wasted away before Bucky could’ve been brought home.)

“And I get it," Tony said quietly. "I get why you did what you did. It took me a while to comes to terms with that, between, ah, looking at your moral compass and looking at what you were protecting,  _who_ you were protecting... it became clear which side you'd chose." 

"It was never about picking sides," Steve told him, unable to keep the sharp note from his voice. "I never meant to hurt anyone, Tony. But...," and his hands rose to cover his face for a moment, running back through his hair and falling limply to his sides. "I let him down. I let him fall off the train. The month before I crashed the plane and nearly every single night after I came out of the ice, I heard his screams played on repeat in my head. I didn't save him and because of that, he was tortured for decades by the same people we laid down our lives to stop. I couldn't fail him again. I couldn't just stand by and let him get hurt again, not while I had the power to defend him." 

There was a beat of silence where a great many things passed over Tony's face and a metaphorical light bulb burst on, golden and overwhelming, over his head. 

“You’re in love with him,” Tony realized, head tipping to the left like he'd finally balanced a complex equation in his head. His back even straightened, something shifting in his features. “Barnes, I mean.”

Steve just smiled and didn't feel anything at all. “What gave it away? The global scale political war I launched in his name? My globetrotting trying to find him for almost two years before Sokovia? The way I wore his wings on my helmet? Or maybe it was the photo of him I carried in my wallet _—"_

Tony surprised him by huffing out a laugh, shaking his head with a small smile that flashed only the slightest hint of teeth. “Wow, I forgot how much of an ass you can be.”

“The kids don’t call me Captain Assmerica for nothing,” Steve deadpanned, just to see the way Tony would squawk in surprise. Even though this was the most mature conversation they'd ever had with one another, Steve saw a bit of the tension bleed out of Tony's body. "T'Challa and Shuri helped him more than I can ever thank them for. He... he got out, Tony. He was in the process of building a life for himself. And when all of this is over, once we've restored everyone, I want out of all this. I want to build a life with him, like we should've been able to do after the war." 

"I know about a dozen historians who'd be thrilled their assumptions about the two of you are right," Tony tried to joke, but it fell flat in the face of Steve's confession. They were both tired. They'd both done so much with very little gained in return. He had no doubt that, on some level, Tony would probably try and extract himself from situations where the Iron Man was needed to settle down, too, once all this was over. "You remember that whole thing with the Mandarin?" 

He did, even if he and Sam had been deep in Eastern Europe and he'd gotten his updates (delivered with extra exasperation) from Nat, who'd still been playing head of public relations for their team at the time. "You gave the guy your address on national television. Destroyed your place in Malibu." 

"Well, after that. There was a fight at an oil field. Aldrich Killian had kidnapped the President and put him in the War Machine armor, but he'd taken Pepper, dosed her up with the Extremis virus _—_ ," this, Steve could recall getting a briefing for. "—and I...," Tony covered his eyes briefly with his right hand, inhaled hard. Steve knew that sort of strain, knew Tony was likely reliving the moment in his mind. "The whole place was going up in flames, going to rubble and getting progressively worse by the second and she was trapped under this... this metal beam and I reached for her. And I told her that I had her, that everything would be okay, and she fell. God. Hundreds of feet? I watched her get swallowed up by the blaze and I thought..."

Steve tried not to think about how he'd believed he'd lost Bucky to ice, how Tony thought he'd lost Pepper to fire. His brain screamed the word  _symmetry_ and his stomach threatened to seize. Pepper. at least, was as safe as she could be in Manhattan. Steve tried and failed not to envy Tony's ability to be able to pick up a phone and hear the love of his life on the other end. "She didn't want to under go those experiments." 

"No. No, of course she didn't." 

He felt his mouth twist into the approximation of a smile. Steve didn't need a mirror to be aware there was no light behind his eyes. "You think Bucky did? You think he wanted all that?" 

"I gave up my suits for her," Tony told him, ignoring the prompts Steve placed before him with about as much grace as a stumbling man leaving a bar. "Gave the protocol for them to all blow. Because I knew she worried. I knew she worried for me. She still does. Hell, it amazes me that in-between running Stark Industries, being a benefactor for a number of charities, and running damage control on any sort of negative press that surfaces, that she even has the time. I would do anything to make sure she was safe and happy. I try my best every day to be a better person for her and half the time, even though I know she loves me, too, I never feel like I'm enough. I never feel like I'm doing enough. But I keep trying. So long as she'll have me, I'll never stop trying.

"What I'm trying to say is, I get it, alright? Now that you've gone and laid everything out, I get it. You're a mighty private person, Rogers. I can't help that there were a bunch of pieces missing and it led to this...," he gave a wave of his hand, trying to encapsulate the narrowing chasm between them. "Shitstorm barreling out of control."

"I've always played my hand close to my chest," Steve retorted. "When I was growing up, I had Bucky and my Ma. That was it. And then I lost my mother, found Peggy, the Commandos, and your father, and then Bucky... I woke up in a world where everyone I knew was dead or dying. I had Peggy and I loved her as well as I could, but she was already fading. So I clung to any memory I had of Bucky. I held them close because I had nothing left of him. Hell, all our things had been scattered to museums across the country. I had to print photographs off the internet just to have a picture of him to frame. How private or public I am shouldn't matter. We've never been that great at communicating with one another. I think you can agree to that." 

Tony didn't exactly confirm or deny this assertion, but he did allow: "There's no time like the present to work on it." 

They stood in silence, not quite comfortable, but not finding discomfort in the other's company, either. The ground between them was even, allowing for equal footing. Because he could think of nothing else, Steve offered: "Congratulations, by the way." 

"Hmm?" 

"You and Pepper. Your engagement?" 

Tony visibly perked at the thought of his fiancée, the hard line of his mouth curling into something reserved though Steve had no issue in seeing the fondness that loitered just below the surface. "I must have missed your card in the mail. Um." Tony ducked his head, huffed out a toneless laugh. "Sorry, sorry. Thank you. Seriously."  

"He was happy for you," Steve admitted quietly. "Bucky, I mean. When we heard you and Pepper got engaged. He wanted me to call, thought that might be the thing that got you and I talking again." 

Tony did not snark something like  _well maybe when we get him back, you two can come to the wedding,_ though his face softened a few degrees further. "Sounds like he was good for you, Rogers."

"He is," Steve said, recalling warmly the days spent sunning themselves in the grass with Bucky fingers threaded through his, the quiet mornings where they didn't need to speak to have a full conversation. "He really, really is." And Steve did not say  _maybe when we get him back, you two can also try to work things out_. It would be far too forward and far too out of character. They'd already made leaps and bounds with each other. Small steps. There was no need to force anyone's hand. 

While Steve had no idea how Tony might reply, if he would have said anything further at all, he would never know, not when there was the sudden flurry of footsteps to break through their little bubble. Natasha burst into the alcove— Steve wondered if she knew they were there the whole time, if she'd been waiting outside to see how things played out— but her eyes held the first signs of hope he'd seen in a long, long time and there was something like a smile tilting her mouth upright. "We just got a call pushed through. It sounds promising." 

Tony shifted his weight, cocked his head a few degrees to the right in bemusement. "Who?" 

"Her name's Carol Danvers." 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr @ fypoedameron and on Twitter @buckyjerkbarnes
> 
> Honestly, I feel like Tony has grown a LOT since Civil War. He was going to call Steve before Ebony Maw descended on New York, so he was at the point where he was ready to speak, but then I feel as though with the loss of Peter and company, he'd recede into himself. It would take, as shown, Steve literally telling him to just spit out whatever it is he wants to say for any ground to be covered. That said, let me know how you all feel about this take in the comments! Stay warm, stay lovely, x.


End file.
